The
Old Testament reading next Sunday is the long story of David bringing the Ark
of the Covenant to Jerusalem. You may
not get to hear it, partly because it is so long, and partly because this
ancient tale is pretty odd in places.
Here is a bit of it… So David went and brought up the ark of God from
the house of Obed-edom to the city of David with rejoicing; and when those
who bore the ark of the Lord had gone six paces, he sacrificed an ox
and a fatling. David danced before the Lord with all his might;
David was girded with a linen ephod. So David and all the house of Israel
brought up the ark of the Lord with shouting, and with the sound of
the trumpet. As the ark of the Lord came into the city of David,
Michal daughter of Saul looked out of the window, and saw King David leaping
and dancing before the Lord; and she despised him in her heart. (II
Sam 6:12-16)
The
Ark of the Covenant was the wooden box containing the stone tablets of the sacred
Law Moses had received on Mount Sinai. On
it were two bronze angels, and between them was believed to be the Shekinah,
the very presence of the invisible God among his people. It is important now to David to have the Ark
in Jerusalem, for political as well as for religious reasons. And so we have this curious account of the
long procession to Jerusalem. The Ark is
on a new cart. David goes ahead wearing,
we are told, only a linen ephod, a priestly garment, a sort of apron.[1] They had songs and lyres and harps and
tambourines and castanets and cymbals[2].
Every six paces, we learn, David sacrifices an ox and a fatling sheep, which
must have been seriously unpleasant… He danced
before the Lord with all his might.
At one point the Ark topples, and Uzzah steadies it with his hand – for
this Uzzah is struck down by God, somewhat to David’s dismay, and the place is thereafter
called Perez-Uzzah, Uzzah’s Mistake. Saul’s
daughter Michal, watching from a window, thinks it is all contemptible… we are
told.
…and
I admit, it doesn’t have a lot to do with Christian Meditation, or with
contemplative life and prayer. King
David, much revered in Israel and Judah, as also in the Christian narrative,
was in fact a decidedly mixed blessing. The
Hebrew scriptures give us a few stories of David… and quite soon you realise
that he exemplifies the kind of power all too familiar these days… confusing
exuberance and image with quiet wisdom and responsibility, treating other
people as secondary always to his own ego, distorting religion until it becomes
a superstitious cargo cult. David could
swerve between repentance[3]…
and lies, murder and adultery. But mercifully,
this kind of narrative in our sacred story includes also the voice of the
prophets... Nathan, for instance, David’s external conscience… or Amos comes to
mind: I hate, I despise your festivals,
I take no delight in your solemn assemblies… the offerings of your fatted
animals I will not look upon. Take away
from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your
harps. But let justice roll down
like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.[4] True faith, whether in Israel or in the realm
of Christ, is the conversion of our hearts, and this is much more likely to be
in silence and in stillness, listening and waiting… learning love and truth.
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